A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(76)

“From our own St. Maddern’s Isle bees,” she told me as she handed me one of the tankards.

I took a sip and nearly choked. “This is not cider,” I protested as I wheezed.

“Of course it is,” she told me, taking a great swallow of the stuff and smacking her lips appreciatively. “With a bit of rum in it.”

“How much rum, Mother Nance?”

“No more’n half a teacup in each,” she promised.

Half a teacup. At this rate I would be drunk as a lord by the time I finished our little chat. I made a note to myself to drink slowly.

“Did you hear there was a bit of excitement up at the castle?” I ventured. “Some say Rosamund’s ghost has appeared, just as you said.”

She shook her head, her expression inscrutable. “I did indeed say it.”

“You are a canny woman, Mother Nance. What do you think happened to her?”

She shrugged. “Who can say? Perhaps the merfolk have come at last to take one of their own home.”

I suppressed a sigh and took another drink. “A faery tale,” I told her. “You do not really believe that merfolk came ashore and dragged Malcolm Romilly’s bride to her death.”

Her look was pitying. “’Twouldn’t be death, lovey. Not to go to the merfolk. Going home, more like.”

This line of questioning was clearly unproductive, so I tried a different tack. “The whole business has been terribly upsetting for the master of the island. Surely the rest of you would like an answer for his sake.”

She said nothing but merely sipped at her cider, and it occurred to me that an unsolved mystery with ghosts and a missing bride and perhaps a few merfolk thrown in for good measure was bound to be good for business. Travelers and curiosity seekers and other ghouls would be lured from miles around.

“I suppose he shall simply have to reconcile himself to being a tragic bridegroom,” I said.

“Like your Templeton-Vane,” she said, darting me a sly glance over the top of her tankard. I lifted a brow at her and she laughed. “Of course, the question is, which one?” she added.

“They are neither of them mine,” I told her.

She peered at me suddenly, her curious gaze searching my face. “I’d not have thought you blind, my dear. But there’re none so blind as they that will not see.”

I gave her a thin smile. “Perhaps we might get back to the subject of Rosamund,” I suggested.

She flapped a hand. “You’re a thruster, you are.”

“A thruster?”

“Pushing in where there is no place for you and making one,” she explained. I opened my mouth to object, but she held up a hand. “I don’t say it’s a bad thing, so settle your feathers, my dear. You’ve had to do it, haven’t you? All your life. Ever since you were born under a shadow.”

“Born under a shadow?”

“’Tis the sight,” she explained. “I know when a person has been born in sunlight and when they’ve been born in shadow. You are a child of the moon, poppet. That darkness never leaves you. It is your constant companion, and it always will be. And you know it, don’t you?”

“Mother Nance,” I began patiently.

“Ah, you don’t want to talk about it, do you, love? Mother Nance understands. ’Tis a hard thing for a child to know she isn’t wanted. It gets into her blood and bones until she knows that she must always find her own way, for none will smooth her path. But that sort of thing makes a woman strong, you know. Have you ever broken a bone?” she asked me suddenly.

“Yes,” I told her, my mind whipping back to the summer I was eight and I fell from an apple tree. “My arm. When I was a little girl.”

She put out her hand and I stretched my arm towards her. She cradled the wrist a moment, closing her eyes. Then her hands, cupping gently, moved up the limb, pausing halfway between wrist and elbow.

“’Twas here,” she said, more to herself than to me. “This is where the bone broke and was mended.” She patted my arm. “And it is stronger now. Did you know that? When broken places mend, they are stronger than before.”

I said nothing, but as she held my arm, I felt a curious warmth beginning to flow from her palms through my sleeve and into my flesh. A witch’s blessing, I thought wryly. After a long moment, she smiled and released me.

“Hearts are the same as bones, you know,” she said as she picked up her tankard again.

“Are they?”

“Aye. One may be broken into a thousand pieces, but when they are bound together again and a heart is made whole, the love it gives will be all the fiercer.”

I thought of Stoker, so desperately in love with his first wife, and the betrayal that had nearly destroyed him.

She narrowed her gaze. “I could give you a charm for that,” she said, watching me carefully. “It wouldn’t take much, you know. Just a suggestion of a glamour, the merest whisper of a spell . . .”

She let her words trail off suggestively, and for an instant, I was tempted. How easy it would be! To tip a bit of potion into a cup of tea or a glass of whisky . . .

I shook my head, banishing the rum-laced thoughts that were clouding my judgment. “No, thank you, Mother Nance.”

Her mouth twisted into an indulgent smile, very like the one she gave her grandson, I thought. To her I was a child, and a stubborn one, refusing the help that she offered.